Enhance student engagement, collaboration, and feedback in both asynchronous and synchronous learning with FeedbackFruits LMS-integrated teaching tools.
This Theme sets out the guiding principles which underpin assessment, offering practical advice and useful resources. Assessment is a fundamental aspect of the student experience. Students learn from assessment activities, interact with staff and peers, and gain feedback on their progress and performance. Assessment enables them to reflect and continually build on their learning.
Research shows that grades are often not a good reflection of student learning and growth, and that being graded can be stressful for students. In addition, many traditional grading practices can exacerbate existing academic inequalities. We encourage faculty to design assessments that directly support student learning first, with their evaluative role considered secondarily.
We have compiled some options for creating assessment activities and policies which are learning-focused, while also being equitable and compassionate. The suggestions are loosely grouped by expected faculty time commitment. Many suggest ways faculty can provide students with skills practice, feedback on their performance, and opportunities for reflection on their learning processes and growth. In all cases, the suggestions below assume some course design fundamentals including assessments aligned with course learning objectives.
bulb Digital Portfolios started as a platform for students to show they’re more than a test score; it still is the simplest digital formative assessment tool on the market. And as the product has grown, bulb has turned into a global hub where users showcase their skills through beautiful, multimedia content on an incredibly easy-to-use platform.
To assist European universities to become more mature users and custodians of digital data about their students as they learn online, the SHEILA project will build a policy development framework that promotes formative assessment and personalized learning, by taking advantage of direct engagement of stakeholders in the development process.
When planning a programme it is important to consider how staff and students experience the delivery of that programme and its assessment. Core to this process are the dates when assessments are set and subsequently handed in – students do not want to have a bunching of coursework and staff need to manage their workload! The Programme Mapper does both. It will graphically display all the hand-in dates for each course within a programme and display, in real time, the effect of any changes you make.
H. Butler, C. Dwyer, M. Hogan, A. Franco, S. Rivas, C. Saiz, and L. Almeida. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 7 (2):
112-121(2012)New Perspectives on Developing and Assessing Thinking: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Thinking.
S. Ambrose, M. Bridges, M. DiPietro, M. Lovett, and M. Norman. John Wiley & Sons, (2010)Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn. Herbert Simon.